As the Texans turned 2-5 into 9-7 and the AFC South title, Cushing led the third-best defense in the NFL with 110 tackles and played in all 16 regular-season games for the first time since 2011.

But with all the talk about Whitney Mercilus’ 2015 ascension, Watt’s fourth All-Pro year and Romeo Crennel’s in-game creations, Cushing continues to be the forgotten man leading the Texans’ D.

“He does so many little things in the locker room, the trainer’s room, that people will never see that mean the world to this team,” said Marc Vandermeer, Texans senior director of broadcasting. “As the total package, he’s underrated. … what he brings to the entire organization, top to bottom, behind those doors and on the field.”

I wrote about what Saturday’s AFC wild-card game against Kansas City at NRG Stadium means to Cushing and his at times heartbreaking career.

Cushing on the challenges he’s faced to get back to the playoffs with the Texans: “I wouldn’t want the easy way to go about things. I just wouldn’t. I’m made up differently than most people. I enjoy the past that was given to me.”

His relationship with the Texans: “We just have respect for each other. They know they’re going to get everything out of me, every single Sunday. And that’s something I promised them a while ago, sitting in the combine room and hoping they would draft me.”

The blowout in Miami and being 2-5: “I remember the flight home and the next morning, just having such a sense of disgust. And that’s the best way I can put it: Disgusted. … It was just a horrible display of what we were as a team and especially as a defense.”

His NFL future: “I’m going to play as long as I can. But I also understand the nature of this game … and how brutal it can be at times.

There’s no feeling like NFL Sunday and going out there. It’s in my blood and my DNA. … I know one day I won’t be able to do it anymore. So I’m going to try and do it as long as I can.”

What he means to the franchise: “When you look back at why I was brought here, it was to really change the culture of this team. … They wanted an attitude and an edge.”

Johnathan Joseph on Cushing: “He’s really extreme out there. And I think that kind of is what makes him a really good player. He plays hard from whistle to whistle. He gives us great energy to feed off as a team. And I think anytime you play middle linebacker you have to have a fine line to where you’re really extreme and you’re able to go out there and communicate, because he’s kind of like the quarterback back there on defense. So he really can’t get too over the top because there’s a lot of things they have to do on each call and every play, where he’s kind of the lead guy there getting everyone in position.”

Crennel on Cushing: “He takes that leadership role. He embellishes it. He communicates, makes the call from the field, and then he plays hard and makes plays as a player. That’s what you want. I mean, like I tell the guys all the time, if you’ve ever been to a Broadway play, all right, on that stage, there’s generally one or two stars. But then you have a whole lot of other people that make that play successful and make it go, and the thing that I try to impart on these guys is everybody has a role to play. Play your role to the best of your ability, and then maybe one day then you can be that star.”

]]>http://blog.chron.com/ultimatetexans/2016/01/brian-cushings-best-season-since-2011-produces-emotional-playoff-return/feed/0The Sports Update: Smith, Wilson on Texans making playoffshttp://blog.chron.com/ultimatetexans/2016/01/the-sports-update-smith-wilson-on-texans-making-playoffs/
http://blog.chron.com/ultimatetexans/2016/01/the-sports-update-smith-wilson-on-texans-making-playoffs/#respondMon, 04 Jan 2016 01:30:26 +0000http://blog.chron.com/ultimatetexans/?p=75497Houston Chronicle writers Aaron Wilson and Brian T. Smith discuss the Texans in the playoffs for the third time in franchise history.

Video by Brian T. Smith and Aaron Wilson

The Sports Update: Smith, Wilson on Texans making playoffs

Houston Chronicle writers Aaron Wilson and Brian T. Smith discuss the Texans in the playoffs for the third time in franchise history.

With the NFL scheduled to meet in Houston on Jan. 12-13 to vote on three teams potentially relocating to the country’s second-largest market, McNair discussed the futures of the St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders during an interview Monday with the Houston Chronicle.

“The purpose of this meeting is to hopefully make a decision on Los Angeles and that’s what we’re driving toward,” said McNair, who is a member of the NFL’s Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities. “We have three teams that are interested in moving to Los Angeles. Only two are going to be approved if any are approved.

“One of the teams would not be able to move if we approve two. So they’d have to stay in their home market. And one of our concerns is what level of support are they receiving in their home market? And if they’re receiving a reasonable amount of support, my personal feeling and most owners’ is we don’t think people should move.”

McNair said the NFL needs “certainty” before any decision is made at the Houston meeting. But as things currently stand, the Rams are more likely to remain in St. Louis.

“St. Louis, they have come up with a proposal that is getting pretty close, in my opinion, to being an attractive proposal,” McNair said. “And if they do come up with an attractive proposal, then in my view, my personal opinion, I don’t think the Rams will receive the approval to relocate. So that would mean then you’d have two teams, San Diego and Oakland, that would be going into Carson, (Calif.). They have a partnership to build a stadium.”

Here are the rest of McNair’s comments about the NFL returning to Los Angeles.

McNair’s personal feeling about pro football in L.A.: “It’s the second-largest market in the country and certainly we should be there. On the other hand, we’ve done very well not being there. So it’s not the end of the world. And in terms of TV viewership and what have you, it’s as high out there as it is in other places, even though they don’t have a team. And some people say, ‘We don’t want a team because now we can watch anything we want to see.’ Where as if you put a team out there, there will be certain restrictions.”

Main issues for move: “Everybody has to have a stadium that is a modern stadium and will allow them to have the facilities that will allow them to be competitive with the other teams.”

Chargers: “In San Diego, they’ve been trying for about 15 years. They’ve had all kinds of political problems there. At one time, half the council went to jail or something. It’s been pretty bad. It’s hard to negotiate when you’ve got to go to the jail to negotiate. So they haven’t accomplished anything. They’re saying they’re going to do something now. But in order to do it, they’d have to have a referendum and the referendum isn’t until next June. Well, we can’t have these teams in limbo. You need to have certainty and you don’t know if the referendum would pass or fail. We can’t take what they’re saying very seriously.”

Raiders: “Oakland is basically saying, ‘We don’t have any money. We’re going to take care of the baseball team and we’re not going to do anything for the football team.’ So that’s where they are. And those are the two worst stadiums in the league.”

Chargers and Raiders in Carson: “Bob Iger, who is the CEO of Disney, has agreed to be their non-executive chairman to shepherd that whole event and introducing those teams back to the L.A. market, the branding and what have you. And I think he’d probably do a pretty spectacular job.”

January meeting: “We’ve told the cities we’ve got to have the information this month, sort of the final deal, and we have to have certainty on whatever it is you’re talking about in order to evaluate it.”

Texans coach Bill O’Brien knew how demanding pro football was before he started walking the sideline in Houston. But he acknowledged he’s seen the game with a different view after having his name personally attached to the 2014 and ’15 Texans.

“The day that I became a head coach … you really have these 63 guys and you’re watching this really violent sport, injuries really are something that, in my own personal opinion, they really bother you because you really don’t want to see anybody get hurt,” O’Brien said Monday at NRG Stadium. “You really don’t. And especially those types of injuries. I’m not talking about a sprained ankle. I’m talking about getting hit in the head or even when T.J. (Yates) got hit from behind. I mean that was a violent – very clean hit, very, very clean hit – but very violent hit.

“That bothers you. So as coaches, we’re certainly not doctors. But if we notice a guy that’s really not responding to us the way he normally would, we’ve known him – Brian (Hoyer) is the example I’m using – we’ve known him for so long, we know how he calls the play, we know his intelligence level. And we know that, ‘Hey there might be something wrong there because he’s a little bit, he’s a day late and a dollar short on a couple things there.’ So that’s when we point it out to the trainer and go from there. But that’s as far as our involvement is on it.”

DeAndre Hopkins, Duane Brown, Benardrick McKinney and Hoyer are among Texans who’ve suffered concussions this season. A.J. Bouye and the Jets’ Darrelle Revis had concussions on the same day Keenum was slammed to the ground, then allowed to keep playing for St. Louis, despite showing clear signs of an in-game concussion.

“I know that as it relates to the Houston Texans, I feel like the process has been really good. I really do,” O’Brien said. “The communication that I have with (director of sports medicine/head athletic trainer Geoff Kaplan) Kap and our doctors on game day is really right there. Our doctors are right there, Kap is right there.

“If there is an issue, not just with a concussion issue, but any injury, we are in constant communication and I know that Kap is in communication with (general manager) Rick (Smith), who’s watching the game somewhere upstairs. I know that part of the process has been really good.”

O’Brien recalled one instance this season when a Texans game was paused to check on a possibly concussed player.

“The official stopped the game and the player had to come out of the game earlier in the season,” O’Brien said. “I thought that was fair, because he felt like the player got up slow and wasn’t all there. So, hey, he has to take a play off and get checked out by the doctors. We are really doing the best we can, and we can always be better, but always doing the best we can to look out for player safety.”

But that wasn’t Anne’s main takeaway from watching the Texans’ coach passionately reaching out to his players on national TV.

“I go to water aerobics here,” said Anne, 81, who resides in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts. “And there’s a couple of women … they’re not women I know really well, and they’re, ‘Now, how is he doing? What does he think of this?’ And I’m just laughing. It’s amazing. You don’t realize really how much people watch.”

Anne watched the debut with her husband and Bill’s father, John. The long-married couple were struck by Bill’s strong connection with the Texans and the power of watching their son on a worldwide stage. But Anne also acknowledged the parents had a conversation after the show that centered around their son’s fondness for a few choice words.

“I can understand when he’s talking with the players on the field and all, that’s one thing,” Anne said. “But I do think that when he’s on major television and speaking to the whole world – and a lot of people love that program, so they’re watching it; you’re talking about families maybe watching it – I do think that he’s going to have to reduce it. I think it was a little bit overboard, yeah.”

Bill joked that he planned to go to confession for the first time since the sixth grade. He also hoped to reduce his reliance on adjectives while the cameras were rolling.

“Hard Knocks” allows Bill’s parents to see him in a new setting. They’ve followed his career from Brown to the Texans. But Anne and John have never seen their son’s football life in such up-close detail before.

“Most people don’t go to Brown to be coaches. And so they were always very supportive of me. I’ll never forget that,” Bill said. “They said, ‘Hey, if this is what you have a passion for and this is what you want to do, we support you.’ And over time, it’s worked out pretty well. We’ve had our tough times in coaching, my wife and I, but over time we’ve been a part of some pretty special things.

“My parents have been a part of that, too, and they really love that. My dad always describes, being from Boston, we love politics, we love football and we love that Irish heritage, that family. The football part of it, my brothers and my parents, they love it.”

Bill has an especially close bond with his mother. As the youngest in a family of three brothers, Bill grew close to his mom while his two older siblings and father were away. Anne’s energy in life and passion for football were passed down to her youngest son.

“My oldest brother is 10 years older than me and my middle brother is six years older than me, so when they went away to college it was me with my mom and my dad,” O’Brien said. “And my dad at the time was working and he was traveling a lot, so my mom and I were together all the time. She was working – she was a head librarian in the city of Lowell – and she would drive to my high school, pick me up, take me to practice, take me home.

“So we did, we spent a lot of time together. And to me, I learned a lot from her. I learned a lot about work ethic. She’s probably where I get my passion. She’s energetic and she loves sports. She would do anything (for) any of us.”

Texans owner Bob McNair was given a lot of space in a column in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle. Many answers had to be edited down, though. Here are McNair’s full comments about everything from a quarterback problem that dates back to the team’s 2002 inception, his continued support of general manager Rick Smith and McNair’s belief that his son, Cal, is the right person to eventually take over control of the franchise.

The overall state of the Texans: We’re moving in the right direction. Of course, we had to make a lot of changes after 2013. We’ve completed a lot of those transactions. We still have some work to do. But we’re much more competitive now and we’ve got competition at just about every position and that’s what will make us a better team. I’m pleased with the progress that we’ve made and we’ve got some good young players. I’m excited about them and our draft. I’m excited about the players that we signed, the college players that weren’t drafted – we’ve got several boys in there, several guys, that have a chance of making the team. It’s exciting to watch them.

The Texans’ growth in Houston: I felt that the city wanted a team they could be proud of and that means proud of the players and also proud of the coaches and the front office. That’s been one of our goals. And I feel we have a group that the city can be proud of. I’m certainly proud of ‘em. We still have a long way to go to accomplish what we want to accomplish, which is to win the Super Bowl.

Our fans recognize we’re a high-quality operation and we’re going to get good results. Now, you never know when and we’d like for it to happen faster. But it’s a very competitive league and one of the things we’ve learned is the difference between winning and losing is such a small degree.

Balancing urgency with patience as an owner: You want your players and your coaches and everybody in the organization to have a sense of urgency and we do have a sense of urgency. But the question is, how do you make things happen as quickly as possible? Do you do it by having an organization that’s seasoned, that’s been working together and understands what the goals and objectives are and we work together as a team? Or do you constantly shake things up and change things? And I’m just a believer in having a stable organization. Of course, you’ve got to have good people in the right spots and if you don’t, you have to make those changes. Stability is important. If you look at the franchises that have been good, solid franchises over long periods of time, they don’t have a lot of turnover.

People are not readily available to you in the NFL, because everybody is under contract. You can’t just go out, if you have a weak spot, you can’t just go out overnight and pick up somebody to fill that slot. It’s a question of when they’re available.

That’s the thing that I really wasn’t prepared for. That it would take as long as it takes to sometimes fill these slots. But that’s the nature of the NFL and that’s the way it’s set up and that’s the way it’s going to be.

Texans’ quarterback situation this year and since 2002: If you look around, there are very few really super quarterbacks. There are just very few. If you’re lucky enough to have one, lucky enough that one of these Andrew Lucks is available when you have the top pick, then that’s just a matter of luck. You can’t attribute that to anything else. That quarterback who is a super quarterback can help cover up other deficiencies you have. If you don’t have that super quarterback, then you’ve got to really be good in the other areas in order to win. And that’s where we are. We think we’ve got good quarterback candidates and guys that can go out and perform. And it remains to be seen how good they can be and hopefully they’re just going to keep getting better and better.

Of course, (Ryan) Fitzpatrick had probably his best year under coach O’Brien. Coach really gets it all out of the quarterbacks. It really is a good environment for quarterbacks. We’ll try to make it up by having one of the best defenses, so we’ll keep other teams from scoring many points. And we’ll be able to run the ball and hopefully control the clock. And we’ll continue to get better on special teams. So if we can do those three things, all we need is consistent play out of our quarterbacks – they don’t have to be superheroes. And if they don’t turn the ball over and just go out and execute the game plan, we think we’ll win.

This is a winning philosophy and other teams have won with this philosophy and we think we can win that way, too. Now, would we like to have that super quarterback? Absolutely. And if we have the opportunity to get that person or develop that person, that’s what we’ll do. Maybe Mallett or maybe Hoyer will blossom or be that person for us. It remains to be seen.

Some saying he’s content to be average in the NFL: No. That’s not – we’re not in it for that reason. We’re in it – the organizations I’ve had before have been winners. We play to win. We’re not happy if we’re not winning. We want to be the best at what we do. That’s our goal and that’s what we work for. That’s what coach talks to the team about all the time: Every day we have to get better. We just have to go out and outperform these other players, these other teams. And that’s what we work to do by trying to get better every day.

Bill O’Brien: When you look at his career and what he’s been through and the coaches he’s worked with, he’s learned a little bit from each one. He’s not a copy of any one of ‘em. He’s his own guy. And he’s smart, adaptable – he can make adjustments. That was one of the top things we had on our list when we were looking for a coach. Things happen so fast in this league that you have to have people that can make the decisions quickly and smartly. That means you’ve got to have a coach that’s not just a good coach and just average intellect. You need a guy who’s smart and our coach is smart. He’s able to size things up and when he needs to make a change, he’s not afraid to move quickly. And that’s extremely important these days and the coaches who are really successful can do that.

Rick Smith: This thing of personnel and evaluating personnel is very subjective. It takes time to really evaluate the work that somebody is doing. We do that every year. We sit down and look at our personnel and where we are. We were criticized with our draft the year before but it was mainly injuries. No one can foretell injuries. The guys who got injured were previously very healthy. And when you take three of your guys with injuries who were in your top four picks, you’re not going to get much production out of that class until they come back. This year, they’ll be back. There at left guard, (Xavier) Su’a-Filo, I think he’s not only going to be a starter, he’s going to be a real fine player. … And then we didn’t have (Jadeveon) Clowney. We had him for what, a game and a half? And then our nose tackle, Louis Nix, he was out for the year. And so he’s back now and in much better shape and looking good. And Clowney is on schedule to return and we’re excited about that. Hopefully he won’t run into any hitches along the way. If so, he should be there to help us at the first of the season. We’re going to get a lot of help from that class. And so that’s what you have to look at, is over a period of about three years, probably, to evaluate each class as to what players you get out of it. And we picked up a number of street free agents that performed well for us.

Everybody in dealing with personnel, everybody is going to make mistakes. When you change coaches, coaches have different desires in terms of what kind of players they want. Some of the people that Gary Kubiak wanted didn’t fit in with what coach O’Brien wanted. So all of a sudden, some of those guys that were alright under one system are not adequate under another system. You have that any time under a transition and that’s one reason why transitions hurt you. It does set you back temporarily, because you have a change in personnel, ultimately.

Rick’s on the competition committee, he’s respected by the other general managers, we’re able to make trades with other teams and to exchange information that’s helpful for all of us. He works hard. He came into this position very young and he’s grown into the position. He’s a lot better now than he was two or three years ago.

Cal McNair: Certainly we’re grooming him to be the leader and I think he’ll be a good one. He’s taking on more and more responsibility. But he’s got a good eye for talent on the personnel side. He gets along well with people. He’s played the game, he appreciates from the players’ perspective and knows what they go through and understands the coaches and the pressure on them. He’s in a good position to continue growing and assuming more responsibility. And so that’s what we’re doing and he’s doing fine.

Tuscaloosa police responded to a residence in the 1700 Block of E. 17th Ave. on a burglary in progress call at 8 a.m. this morning (July 1). Upon arrival, officers spoke with two victims who were inside the residence when the burglary occurred. The victims stated the suspects kicked in the back door and demanded items from the victims. One suspect was armed with an assault rifle and the other suspect was armed with a knife.

Ivory, 23, was charged with two counts of first degree burglary and was placed in the Tuscaloosa County Jail pending a $120,000 bond.

Jaelen’s father and biggest supporter. Big John, who stood 6-8, starred in college basketball at Drexel, then rose higher as a respected Philadelphia police detective.

Rankin’s name is tattooed on Jaelen’s chest and stretches across his heart. It’s the closest the Texans rookie wide receiver will come to touching his dad on Father’s Day.

While sons across the world will reach out or reconnect Sunday – many bonding with their dads through the uniting power of sports – all Jaelen has left of the man who helped create him are memories, photographs, passed-down stories and the name permanently inked on his 21-year-old body.

Jaelen got only nine years with the father who’s still at the center of his life. When the No. 70 overall pick of the 2015 NFL draft was first falling in love with football, cancer was killing his dad. Rankin fought off leukemia for two years. But Big John was forced to eventually give at age 36 in April 2003.

Twelve years later, Jaelen is just like his father in his prime. Proud and hard-headed. Guarded on first glance, then warm and open when trust is formed. A listener, then a speaker.

Texans coach Bill O’Brien is hard on rookies, pushing the first-year players to adapt to the strict requirements of their new professional world.

But 2015 first-round pick Kevin Johnson has already made a strong impression on the demanding coach. Johnson has played with confidence during offseason workouts, made several highlight-worthy plays and was singled out by O’Brien on Wednesday.

“Kevin Johnson is a young player who’s got a really bright future,” said O’Brien, following the second of a three-day minicamp at NRG Stadium. “He’s learning the game, the pro game. He’s got some really good guys to learn from in his coaches, obviously (defensive backs coach) John Butler, but also Johnathan Joseph and Kareem Jackson.

“What Kevin does well is he’s a smart guy, he’s a hard worker. He’s a very good transitional player. So he’s able to see it … and he’s able to transition very well — he’s got good quickness.”

The key for Johnson and all the Texans’ rookies, O’Brien said: “How do they do when the full pads go on?”